Mutant Beauty Pageant: Choose the “Winner!”

Hope everyone had a nice Thanksgiving!

At the moment, I’m particularly thankful that, despite being a jaded old musician, I can still encounter instruments that, um, take my breath away. And if you can view all the Mutant Beauty Pageant contestants without spewing your beverage all over your computer, you’re made of stern stuff indeed.

Exaggeration? You be the judge. Literally!

As specified in the “rules,” the submission deadline has arrived. Now it’s time to choose the most beautiful mutant. Just select your three favorites from the photo gallery below.

Once you’ve decided, post your three choices to the comments thread. By all means, explain why you voted the way you did if you feel so inspired. Alternately, you can email your choices to me if you prefer to vote anonymously. (I’ll add your votes to the poll, but won’t reveal your name.) Many submissions included interesting commentary from the owners, which you can review in the original comments thread here.

The owner of the object with the most votes wins the mystery prize. (Pretty cool how many entires we had, considering that the prize was never specified.) I promised it would be as weird and cool as the contestants, and it is: It’s an Uglyface pedal hand-built by my pal Mitchell Hudson, AKA super-freq. It’s the most warped fuzz pedal I’ve ever heard, and as far as I know, it’s not available commercially, or at least not until Mitchell decides to start selling them again. (The last batch was scooped up by Nels Cline of Wilco.) You can read about and listen to it here.

Fine print: Only one set of three votes per person. No vote changing. Don’t vote for the reindeer. I’ll announce the winner on Thursday, December 1st. If the results are close, we may have a runoff between the three highest scorers.

There are so many cool choices, but I think I’m gonna go with:
-Bertram’s Mystery Guitar
-Dirtbagg’s Amp-in-a-box
-Yank’s Bass
Again, lots of cool stuff here, but more than anything, these three speak to my sensibilities as the three closest to something I might do! Picking three was hard- Chevi’s Ikea Butcher Block Guitar was a close fourth. And of course, I’m not gonna vote for any of MY stuff! 😉

1. El Reclusa’s Bona-Fide Muncher — can never resist homemade shit. he just stuck a trash can lid in there!
2. El Reclusa’s Ghetto Plate — because i have no idea what the fucking thing is which gets my vote.
3. Bertram’s Mystery Guitar — a guitar made our of a scrap 2×10. Cant beat that shit…

Thanks for the votes peeps! (though it looks like my girlfriend and kids voted, but thanks nonetheless, especially to, y’know, people I don’t actually know!)
Anyway, just saw SSS’s comment and thought I’d elaborate a bit on the Ghetto Plate- it’s a reverb unit. Think EMT 140 but made with stuff from the side of the road and Lowe’s. I power it (usually) with an Epiphone Valve Jr. head, which pushes a transducer (think a speaker without a cone) bolted in the middle of it, which sends vibration through the plate, in much the same way vibration is sent through springs in your amp’s reverb. I sometimes use either a clip-on tuner pickup or a diy piezo made from a radio shack buzzer and send the (very trashy) reverbed signal on its merry way, but usually, I just use the plate like you would a speaker- the driver pushes it hard enough to distort. It feeds back nicely when you rest the headstock of the guitar on the frame- very musical. It feeds back like all hell is breaking loose if you press the headstock directly on the plate! Anyway, it’s a lot of fun, and that’s what the eff it is!

Dewey Decibel Flipout is first because it is most mutant-like. It’s reversed. It’s a guitars major birth defect. Too cool

Dr. Soda’s Double-Doom takes second for me. It’s twice the cool and my life revolves everything with diamond plating so I’m likin’ the loof of it for sure.Chevi’s Carbon-Fiber Guitar gets third. It’s sleek and awesome to look at.